An Indomitable Will
by Bevin
Summary: A newly female Zoro wants to continue life as though nothing is different.  The world has other ideas.  No pairings, short character study.


_Author's Note: This is something I wrote a while back as a response to a challenge/request on one of those anonymous writing communities you see around now and then. They asked for a female-Zoro with PMS and this just spawned itself. Decided I liked it well enough to slap it up here, since I haven't updated anything else in ages. Rated to be on the safe side for involuntary bodily functions. None of the characters are mine, I make no money from this story, and if anyone somehow is I have no knowledge of it._

There were certain benefits to being a woman. At least that's what Zoro had always heard other people say. For his part, he'd never considered one gender having much of an advantage over the other and found that the people saying otherwise were trying to compensate for their own issues.

However, he was finding that being a woman was actually different from being a man. Significantly so in some cases. It was making him cranky. He didn't like having doors opened for him, as though he were too weak or fragile to do it for himself. He didn't like it when women complimented his haircut or fashion sense- he knew they suited him and didn't give a crap what anyone else thought about them. He hated going to bars and hearing the conversations nearby either halt entirely or change to something more polite. He hated men being nice to him for no reason, he hated women being catty to him for no reason, and he really hated how different it was. The only thing that hadn't changed was him- he was still who he'd always been, save for a few minor physical differences.

For the most part his friends still treated him the same- there was some initial teasing from Nami about borrowing her pretty clothes for all the dates he was going to get asked on, Franky once asked him if he wanted a contraption to enable him to pee standing up, and the love-cook... it was best not to dwell on that whole issue right there. Suffice to say, the man didn't know how to act around him at all now and usually avoided him whenever possible, which suited Zoro just fine.

He knew none of it was because _he_ was different, it was just that other people now saw him differently. The differences were still hard to ignore when everyone kept commenting on them or worse yet, just acting on them.

"Hey, Zoro, is that a zit?" Nami's annoying voice plopped itself down in the middle of his concentration and he paused mid-count without setting the barbell down.

"What?"

"Right there. Is that a zit?" She was smirking in her lawnchair a few feet away.

Despite himself, he looked where she was pointing. There, just above the scar poking above the wrappings that kept his new chest from interfering with his workout, was a little red dot.

Seriously?

To his clearly irritated look she continued, "I have some concealer, if you want to use it."

What the hell was her problem? Why did she care if he had a zit or not? Why would he care if he had a zit? If it was there, it was there!

The barbell dropped to the deck with a clank and a thud, and he ignored the surprised look on her face as he stalked off toward the kitchen for something to drink. Hopefully the idiot cook wouldn't be in there so he could avoid his awkward silences. Though it was nice he didn't get yelled at for drinking the good booze anymore.

Thankfully the lanky chef was out, probably in one of his new therapy sessions with Chopper, so Zoro helped himself. He hadn't worked up that much of a sweat, but he found himself drinking like he'd been in the desert all day. Maybe he just needed the buzz, after the unexpected jab from the bitchy navigator. He still couldn't believe she'd said that after she'd been so normal to him for a few weeks. Where the hell did she get off, anyway? Why the hell couldn't anyone just move past this and see he wasn't any different in any important way than he'd been before?

After another two bottles, he burst out of the kitchen and onto the deck, wanting to call them all on how rotten they'd been to him and how stupid they were being. He was a little more worked up than usual, but this had been going on long enough and he'd had it.

"You suck!" That got everyone's attention, and all other activity ceased on deck as everyone paused to look at him. "I'm still me, damn it! I am no different now than I was four weeks ago! You!" He pointed to Usopp. "Stop looking away from me when I talk to you! And you!" He pointed to Brook. "Stop asking me what kind of underwear you should ask to see! And you! ... nevermind, Luffy, you're fine. But you!" He pointed at Nami. "I don't care if I have a zit! I don't want your concealer!" His throat was dry from all the yelling so he took another swig from the bottle before his grand finale. "All of you leave me alone until you treat me like you used to!" With that, he stormed off to the crow's nest to work out in solitude, ignoring the sea of stunned faces in his wake.

Sometime early that morning, just before dawn, Zoro woke up. Something was happening, he was positive. All the guys in the room were snoring as usual, there were no unusual sounds coming from the rest of the ship, and he didn't feel a presence that shouldn't be there, but he never woke up abruptly for no reason. Silently, he slunk out of the room to investigate, wishing he hadn't had so much to drink earlier, since he felt heavier and now realized exactly how much he had to pee. Investigating the ship would have to wait for a minute.

Secretly, he had to admit that he hated sitting down to use the bathroom, but there was no way he'd ever admit it to Franky. It was too fussy and made everything more complicated than it needed to be. Plus it made him feel vulnerable sitting there, pants around his knees, anchored to the seat- if anyone came in, it'd be harder to go on the offensive. That didn't ease his feeling that something was off-kilter.

It wasn't until he stood and pulled his pants back up that he realized they were horrifyingly damp in the crotch. He looked back at the toilet to see if he'd accidentally missed in his haste to get there and found himself staring at a pool of deep red. Having plenty of experience with blood, there was no doubt at all that was what it was and he immediately checked himself for wounds. Not finding any was even more concerning- at least with a cut you could sew it closed, but blood with no wound? That was... was... oh. Oh perfect.

He could almost hear Kuina now.

_"So, how come you had to leave forty pounds off your weights, Zoro?"_

_"How come you stopped looking at your reflection in the blades after you polish them?"_

_"Why do you tape your chest down so hard it hurts?"_

_"Why can't you admit this is harder now than it was before?"_

It shouldn't have been harder. His will power was the same, his conviction was the same, his technique was the same, and yet it was harder to lift the weights, harder to keep his arms practicing for the same amount of time, and harder to get the same power out of the moves he'd perfected already. For the first time his words to his childhood friend on that fateful night seemed shallow and arrogant. He'd trained so hard and was so frustrated that he couldn't beat her, but he'd never thought about how hard she must have trained to keep ahead. Nor did he think about how much harder she would have to train her entire life. As hard as he worked now, she would have had to work even harder just to keep up with him. She knew that back then in a way he hadn't understood, and remembering the conviction in her eyes to do it anyway was like a knife through his pride. The weight of her dream on his shoulders suddenly felt heavier and for the first time in his life, Zoro wasn't sure he could carry it.

After flushing and stuffing some toilet paper in his pants, he was all set to leave when someone knocked on the door. Nami was waiting impatiently on the other side when he opened it.

"You've been in there for fifteen minutes! Other people have to use this too, you know!" She barged her way in without bothering to look at him.

"'Scuse the hell out of me." As he turned to leave, a noise from the navigator made him pause, much to his chagrin.

"Oh, so that's what's been going on."

He turned to see what she was talking about and mentally kicked himself when he saw the bloody toilet paper he'd used for clean up in the garbage. It wasn't as though he could blame it on a bloody nose.

Instead of ranting about how disgusting he was, Nami just bent over and retrieved some things from under the sink and held them out to him. "Here, you'll need these. You can pay me back when we get to the next island."

He stared suspiciously at the long, thin items pointed at his nose. He didn't know what they were, but he was quite sure he didn't need them.

"Oh come on, what're you going to do, use toilet paper?" the navigator scoffed. Zoro hoped she couldn't see the momentary look on his face, but her exasperated noise told him she had. "Honestly, you're hopeless. These-" she waved the objects in front of his face as though explaining something to a small child, "-are made for this. Toilet paper disintegrates, leaks through, and shreds. Trust me, the last thing you want is a big, bloody wad of t.p. falling out of your pant leg."

He still hesitated, despite the fact that he knew she was right. Damn it, he hated her when she was right. She grabbed his hand and jammed the items in it anyway.

"And don't try using three at a time. Not everything works that way. Now get out, I'm not peeing in front of you."

Having no desire to witness her using the facilities, he left to go lift weights and grump until he was quite sure she'd gone back to sleep. He was annoyed to discover upon re-entering the bathroom that she'd disposed of the bloody toilet paper for him, which he had no doubt she'd add to his ever growing bill. But the box of feminine products was still under the sink and thankfully had instructions on how to use them- part of him was reassured that women didn't intrinsically know how to use such things either. He also found a note from Nami inside the box telling him to soak his things in the sink in cold water to get the stains out, as well as a P.S. that she was giving him a generous 20% discount on all the help and hygiene products, since it was his first time. He flushed that down the toilet first, then got to work washing his soiled clothing, wondering how women could even function with their body going haywire on them all the time.

The next morning, his weights weren't any lighter (not that he'd been hoping they would be), the weather had the audacity to be nice and sunny when he was in a bad mood, and everyone onboard was giving him a wide berth and treating him a little too delicately. It wasn't helping his mood.

"It's 'cause Usopp said you're having your lady time," Luffy told him later, despite the desperate motions the sharpshooter was making a few feet away to get Luffy to stop talking. "But he wouldn't tell me what a lady time is."

Zoro told him. Bluntly. The captain's eyes went wide.

"Wow! I didn't know girls were so tough!" Nami made an exasperated noise from across the deck. "You all do it?"

"Yes, Luffy, we all do it." She kept reading her newspaper in irritated silence as Luffy ran off to tell Usopp how hardcore girls were. Her eyes never lifted from the print, even when Zoro's shadow fell across it. "I didn't tell them. Usopp figured that's what it was after your weird rant yesterday and told everyone to be extra nice to you."

Figures he'd deliberately ignore the entire reason he was ranting in the first place and do the exact opposite of what he wanted. No wonder Nami was so bitchy all the time.

"You're welcome, by the way." The newspaper rustled as she turned the page.

"I would have figured it out."

She snorted. "Without me you'd have toilet paper falling out of your pants."

"So why even bother? You'd get a good laugh out of it."

The paper rustled again as she folded it closed and looked him in the eye. "Because like it or not, we've all been there. We've all had to soak a pair of underwear in the sink, we've all checked the back of our pants in a mirror when no one else is looking, and we've all had to ask someone to buy us tampons."

He contemplated that for a moment. "So it's a shameful first memory for all girls."

Her paper opened back up with a snap. "It's not shameful, it's inconvenient. You deal with it and you move on. Just be grateful you had me and not a shark fishman for your first one."

He supposed that was one thing to be grateful for. With nothing left to say, he went back to his weights. There was going to be a lot more training filling up his days from now on if his name was going to reach high enough for his old friend to hear it.


End file.
